Fluid transport systems are well known and used in a number of applications. One specific application of transporting a fluid in a machine is the transportation of ink in a printer. Common examples of inks include aqueous inks and phase change or solid inks. Aqueous inks remain in a liquid form when stored prior to being used in imaging operations. Solid ink or phase change inks typically have a solid form, either as pellets or as ink sticks of colored cyan, yellow, magenta and black ink, that are inserted into feed channels in a printer through openings to the channels. After the ink sticks are fed into the printer, they are urged by gravity or a mechanical actuator to a heater assembly of the printer. The heater assembly includes a heater and a melt plate. The heater, which converts electrical energy into heat, is positioned proximate the melt plate to heat the melt plate to a temperature that melts an ink stick coming into contact with the melt plate. The melt plate may be oriented to drip melted ink into a reservoir and the ink stored in the reservoir continues to be heated while awaiting subsequent use.
Each reservoir of colored, liquid ink may be fluidly coupled to one or more inkjet ejectors through at least one manifold pathway. The liquid ink is pulled from the reservoir as the ejectors emit ink drops onto a receiving medium or imaging member. The inkjet ejectors may be piezoelectric devices that receive the liquid ink and eject the ink onto an imaging surface. The inkjet ejectors are selectively activated by a controller with a driving signal.
Conduits typically employed in some implementations for transporting ink between a reservoir and one or more inkjet ejectors may be referred to as “umbilicals”. An umbilical is a flexible conduit fluidly coupled to an inkjet printing apparatus at one end and one or more ink supplies at another end. An umbilical may contain one or many separate channels for transporting fluids such as ink. Typical prior art umbilical assemblies include one or more conduits formed from a flexible material, such as extruded silicone, for example. During operation, the delivery conduits are filled with ink so as to avoid inserting air bubbles into the inkjet printing apparatus. Air bubbles suspended in ink supplying the jet stack may cause ejector misfires during imaging operations.
During maintenance and cleaning operations, ink within a reservoir coupled to the inkjet ejectors may be purged through the inkjet ejectors. A receptacle or catch may be used to capture and hold the purged ink. The receptacle is emptied after a purge operation, typically by pulling the ink out of the receptacle through a conduit to which a negative pressure source has been applied. This conduit that removes purged ink is different than the conduit that supplies ink to the reservoir. Thus, supplying ink to known inkjet printing apparatuses and removing purged ink from these apparatuses requires multiple conduits. Improvements in ink transport to and from inkjet printing apparatuses are desirable.